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Product Key vs Product Serial Number: The same or different?

I ordered a new laptop for my mom and it was just delivered with a competitor's AV. I want to remove it and reinstall her NIS on the machine. She bought the software in 2009 and has renewed every year, the latest being in July 2011.

All the documents she has is the email for the renewal. I guess we downloaded the software and installed it versus buying from a store. So all we have is copies of the renewal and the Product Serial number is shown on every renewal.

So if I reinstall the software from a download and go to register the product, with the Product Serial Number act as the Product Key to associate her subscription with the new installation.

OBTW, she never registered with an onlilne account so I can't recover anything that way.

Suggestions, comments? Do I need to call Customer Service or Technical Support?

Replies

Re: Product Key vs Product Serial Number: The same or different?

I ordered a new laptop for my mom and it was just delivered with a competitor's AV. I want to remove it and reinstall her NIS on the machine. She bought the software in 2009 and has renewed every year, the latest being in July 2011.

All the documents she has is the email for the renewal. I guess we downloaded the software and installed it versus buying from a store. So all we have is copies of the renewal and the Product Serial number is shown on every renewal.

So if I reinstall the software from a download and go to register the product, with the Product Serial Number act as the Product Key to associate her subscription with the new installation.

OBTW, she never registered with an onlilne account so I can't recover anything that way.

Suggestions, comments? Do I need to call Customer Service or Technical Support?

Re: Product Key vs Product Serial Number: The same or different?

The Product serial number and Product key are different, you cannot use the serial number to activate the Norton product. you need an activation code (25 characters long) to activate it. Since you mentioned that you have the serial number. Do you recevied it as an email from Norton on everyrenewal?? if so ,you can use that email address and sig in to your norton account. www.mynortonaccount.com where you can find the product activation key to activate the norton.if you not aware of the emailaddress.Kindly contact Norton Technical Team.either via chat or thru phone and provide the serial number they will help you to activate the norton product. click the below link to contact norton technical support.

Re: Product Key vs Product Serial Number: The same or different?

Before you install the Norton you need to remove the competing product AND clean up very likely with a special tool that we can point you to if you tell as what product it was. If you don't you may have problems installing Norton or it may not run properly.

<< All the documents she has is the email for the renewal. I guess we downloaded the software and installed it versus buying from a store. So all we have is copies of the renewal and the Product Serial number is shown on every renewal. >>

Do you mean this is what you did on another computer? If so when you activated it you would have made the MyNortonAccount using your email address and a password so can you access that and get the KEY. When you RENEW on line with Norton you do not get a new KEY -- the central database is upodated to show the new expiry date and that is all that is needed.

If you can't even do that then do contact the Norton OnLine Support people via the CHAT route as below:

To contact customer support Click on this link and work on from there. You may have to scroll down a little to see the CHAT button.

Feedback from users tells us that CHAT is by far the best at resolving problems.

Note that that link is to the USA/CAN website so if you are located elsewhere I'm sure you will be able to find the equivalent location on your local Symantec website; some pages have a link at the top right where you can select the country you are located in.

Re: Product Key vs Product Serial Number: The same or different?

Don't know if this will help any, but Norton also stores the key in a text file on your computer. So if you have access to the previous installation you should be able to find it by searching for "key.txt", and you should find it in one of the Norton application folders. At least that is what happens on my system. So do a search for "key.txt" on the old computer. Good luck!

Re: Product Key vs Product Serial Number: The same or different?

What huylym is right.It will store the product details in your computer.

If its an Windows XP computer,click on start menu and click on my documents.This will contain a symantec folder and you will have a notepad file with with key in it.

And if all these posts are not yielding results,Enter the chat support and they can help you out.

Like you said if you have not registered the product serial number is more than enough for us,they can guide you in creating a norton account and then add the serial number in our tools which will generate the product key associated with that serial number and get you the key.

Re: Product Key vs Product Serial Number: The same or different?

If your new machine has Win 7 on it, you cannot install a 2009 product from a disc. It is no longer compatible. You will be able to install the 2011 version and use your present current activation key. You will be able to upgrade later to 2012 once a few more glitches are worked out. There is not much point in installing an old inefficient program onto a new machine.

Re: Product Key vs Product Serial Number: The same or different?

What a WEALTH of information that you have provided. This is great. I will show that this problem is solved. Since one or more of you mentioned that the email address on the renewal is the same for the account I did use the Forgot Password route and was successful to access the account and get the Product Key.

I'm good to go, other than someone mentioned that Norton has a tool to remove the competitor product (McAfee) so I will go that route too in order to be problem free.

Re: Product Key vs Product Serial Number: The same or different?

If you have a tool to clean up the competitor AV (McAfee) I'd love to get a link to do that before I reinstall my Mom's NIS.

To hopefully clarify my statement in my orignal post, she had installed NIS on a laptop in 2009. We've renewed the subscription every year, latest being in July 2011. She just got a new laptop this week and I wanted to reinstall NIS on that machine.

The forum has been great source to get me on my way, if you can provide me a tool to clean up McAfee, I'll run that after I uninstall it.

Re: Product Key vs Product Serial Number: The same or different?

If you have a tool to clean up the competitor AV (McAfee) I'd love to get a link to do that before I reinstall my Mom's NIS.

To hopefully clarify my statement in my orignal post, she had installed NIS on a laptop in 2009. We've renewed the subscription every year, latest being in July 2011. She just got a new laptop this week and I wanted to reinstall NIS on that machine.

The forum has been great source to get me on my way, if you can provide me a tool to clean up McAfee, I'll run that after I uninstall it.